History Center inches closer to Douglas Mansion renovation

CEDAR RAPIDS - The History Center's Jason Wright has lots of stories to tell about Linn County.

There's one about how the Palmer method for teaching cursive handwriting was developed here. One about the county's impact on agricultural technology. Or the story of the residents who pushed their trash bags onto a frozen Cedar Lake and returned in the spring to bet on which would sink first.

'It's not find an artifact and tell a story about it,” Executive Director Wright said. 'It's find an engaging story - and an artifact to punctuate that story.”

For the story of Linn County, the Douglas Mansion is the center's 'most precious” artifact, Wright said. Since the Linn County Historical Society purchased the 1893-constructed home in fall 2014, players in the organization - along with contractors and architects from Rinderknecht Associates and Steve Emerson's architecture and design firm, Aspect - have been plotting how best to use the mansion at 800 Second Ave. SE in telling the county's history.

By the end of May, Wright said plans - namely what the new History Center will look like and how much that will cost - should be set.

After that, the museum leaders will move into fundraising, which Wright expects will take about a year and a quarter. Then, they'll have to renovate the 10,085-square-foot former mortuary.

He hopes to have a ribbon-cutting ceremony in early spring 2018.

For now, sheets of white easel paper are taped on walls and doors throughout the mansion with tentative plans - a place for the library, the gift shop, a janitor's closet.

'It might seem like everything's still,” Wright said. 'But we're working really hard.”

Since buying the house, the center has put up a new roof, secured temporary office space on Oakland Road NE and worked to stay visible in the community.

Without a real space, the center has put on events around town, including a Bite of History event - a culinary history lesson - walking tours and presentations at elementary schools.

'We have decided not to just say, ‘We'll be back in a couple years when we get everything done in the mansion,'” board President Adam Ebert said.

It took only a few months for attendance at many of those events to eclipse the number of visitors the center used to see annually, Wright said.

'The greatest issue with The History Center was that it was invisible,” he said. 'We can no longer be invisible.”

Since it was incorporated in 1974, the Linn County Historical Society - which does business as The History Center - has gone through nomadic periods. It was without a physical space until the 1980s, when it moved into a lumber warehouse.

Then, in 1999, it moved into an old Chevrolet dealership at 615 First Ave SE. But the mortgage for the space was too heavy a burden, Wright said, and forced the doors to close in 2006.

In 2008, they began rehiring staff. They sold the property on First in early 2015 for $1.19 million. It has since opened as the Cedar Rapids Day School.

The historical society paid $365,000 for the Douglas Mansion, records show, which created a sizable monetary buffer as the center heads into renovations.

In 2015, most of the center's revenue came from an endowment fund (39 percent), county government (22.7), individual donations (21.7), city government (10.6) and membership fees (4.2).

'We're fortunate in that we have a number of streams of income,” Ebert said. 'We've got strong community support, strong private support, good programming support and an endowment to keep things moving.”

As renovations move forward, those streams will likely shift, Wright said. This year, the center is focusing on increasing corporate sponsorships. Next year, it'll turn to membership numbers.

A yearly membership, $40, buys programming discounts, notice of upcoming events and admission - once there's a museum to actually visit.

The new museum will give Wright space to tell those stories about the county.

A long room upstairs - a former embalming room above a glass window created by Grant Wood - will be home to a permanent exhibit. It will explore innovation in arts and leisure, cultural diversity, education, agriculture and transportation, and industry and science.

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